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Monday, February 4, 2013

Slave for Cotton or Slave of Fashion!!!

"H&M's purpose is to offer their customers fashion and quality at the
best price. H&M states numerous of times that quality is more than
making sure that products meet or exceed their customers expectations.
H&M is constantly working to better their products by manufacturing
under good working conditions, and with limited impact on the
environment. H&M takes responsibility for how their operations
affect people and the environment which is key for their profit and
growth."

What is the meaning of such a mission if it set on the cost of some unethical code of conduct!!

H&M, which has almost 200 UK
stores and 2,500 worldwide, is now one of several high street names
that will be targeted by Anti-Slavery International's cotton campaign,
which calls on well-known brands to stop buying clothing from suppliers
that source cotton from Uzbekistan. "Unless H&M implements the
practical steps set out by the cotton campaign, it is near impossible
for us to be confident that H&M's goods are truly free from
state-sponsored forced labour," a spokeswoman for the charity said. "By
implementing these steps, we can be confident that H&M is doing
everything it can to support an end to the use of forced labour."

One of Britain's most popular fashion chains is under pressure to sever its links with clothing suppliers that buy cotton from Uzbekistan, where large quantities are harvested using child labour.

H&M,
the giant fashion chain which uses football star David Beckham and
singer Lana Del Rey in its advertising campaigns, has signed a pledge to
"not knowingly" source cotton from the central Asian country in
response to concern from human rights groups. will it make any sense!!!???

Uzbekistan, one of
the world's largest exporters of cotton, forces adults and children as
young as nine to pick cotton under what the charity Anti-Slavery International
describes as "appalling conditions". However, it is difficult to trace
Uzbek cotton back to its source. Much of it ends up in Bangladesh and
China. As a result, many fashion chains cannot guarantee that their
clothing is free of Uzbek cotton.

Every year, more than a million men, women, and children in Uzbekistan
are forced by their government to work in the state-run industry
harvesting cotton. Activists who speak out are tortured and detained.

And how does the government of Uzbekistan continue to get away with
these crimes? Cotton purchasing companies like Daewoo International buy
up Uzbek slave-grown cotton and sell it -- sometimes using
layers of middlemen to further separate brands from the slave-grown
cotton -- to multinational clothing retailers that are willing to turn a
blind eye to the source of their cotton. That means retailers
like H&M, the world's second largest clothing retailer, have
tremendous power to stop this modern day slavery, by refusing to buy
cotton from Daewoo.

Than whats the irony!!!???

H&M made a public pledge not to buy Uzbeki cotton, but yet it
continued to purchase from Daewoo, a company directly profiting from
slavery in Uzbekistan -- a fact activists from the global Cotton
Campaign recently discovered. It's clear that without major changes to
its supply chain monitoring system, H&M could "accidentally"
purchase tainted cotton again.

he global economy is full of human rights violations, but
the Uzbek cotton industry is unique. The industry is run by the
country's authoritarian regime, and local authorities have to force
people to work to meet production quotas. Schools are often closed
during plantings and harvests so children can be forced into the fields.
None of the profits are returned to farmers or local communities.

There aren’t many corporations that are willing to do business
with Uzbekistan, but the Korean conglomerate Daewoo International runs
three large cotton processing facilities there. Daewoo processes cotton
all over the world and sells clothing to apparel companies, and it’s
difficult to know which Daewoo products are slave-grown and which
aren’t. So human rights activists have called on companies to boycott Daewoo entirely.

If we can get H&M to ensure that slave-grown cotton is permanently
out of its supply chain, the impact could ripple across the entire
retail industry. Daewoo -- which buys from Uzbekistan because it
thinks it's immune to public pressure -- will see that another one of
its former customers is putting up walls to prevent any slave-grown
cotton from getting into its supply chain. We've heard rumors that
Daewoo is considering packing up and leaving Uzbekistan because it keeps
losing customers, so H&M's actions could come at just the right moment to push Daewoo out of the slave-grown cotton industry for good.

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Ordained by Destiny, Passionate about Learning, Down on Luck, Beaten by Ego, Still confused about Life, Finding refuge in Philosophy, A Thorough Romantic, An Innocent Quixote, Patronized by Spirituality, Falling in Love with Words, A Die-Hard Dreamer!!!